Monday, December 31, 2012

Zapatistas Announcement of New Steps Dec. 30, 2012

Zapatistas announce Next Steps

MexicoDecember 30, 2012

To the
People of Mexico:

To the Peoples and Goverments of the
World:

Brothers and Sisters:

Compañeros and
compañeras:

This past December 21, 2012, in the pre-dawn hours, tens of
thousands of indigenous Zapatistas mobilized and we took over, peacefully and in
silence, 5 municipal seats in the Mexican southeastern state of Chiapas.

In the cities of Palenque, Altamirano, Las
Margaritas, Ocosingo, and San Cristobal de las Casas, we watched you and we
watched ourselves in silence.

This is not a message of
resignation.

It is not one of war, death, or destruction.

Our
message is one of struggle and resistance.

After the media-driven coup
d'état that exalted a poorly concealed and even more poorly disguised ignorance
to the federal executive branch, we made ourselves present so that you would
know that if they never left, neither did we.

Six years ago, a segment of
the political and intellectual class went out in search of someone to blame for
its loss. At that time we were in cities and communities, struggling for justice
for an Atenco that was not fashionable at that time.

On that yesterday
first they defamed us, and then they wanted to shut us up. Too incapable and
dishonest to see that within themselves they had and have the seeds of their own
destruction, they tried to make us disappear with lies and complicit
silence.

Six years later, two things remain clear:

They don't need
us to fail.

We don't need them to survive.

We never left, even
though media from all over the spectrum have dedicated themselves to making you
believe that, and we are reemerging as the indigenous Zapatistas that we are and
will be.

In these past years we've strengthened ourselves and we have
significantly improved our living conditions. Our standard of living is superior
to that of the indigenous communities that are linked to the governments in
power, that receive charity and squander it all on alcohol and useless
things.

Our homes improve without hurting nature by imposing roads upon
it that are foreign to it. In our villages, the land that was previously used to
fatten estate owners' cattle is now used to grow the corn, beans, and vegetables
that brighten our tables.Our work has the double satisfaction of providing
us with what we need to live honorably and to contribute to the collective
growth of our communities.Our boys and girls go to a school that teaches
them their own history, that of their fatherland and of the world, as well as
the sciences and techniques they need to grow without no longer being
indigenous.

The indigenous Zapatista women are not sold as merchandise.
The indigenous PRI members go to our hospitals, clinics, and laboratories
because in those provided by the government there are no medicines, nor
equipment, nor doctors, nor qualified personnell.

Our culture florishes
not insolation, but rather enriched by contact with the cultures of other
peoples of Mexico and the world.

We govern and we govern ourselves,
always seeking agreement before confrontation.

All of this has been
achieved not only without the government, the political class, and the media
that accompanies them, but also while resisting their attacks of all
kinds.

We have demonstrated, yet again, that we are who we are. With our
silence, we were present.

Now, with our word we announce
that:

First: we reaffirm and consolidate our membership in the National
Indigenous Congress [CNI],a space for meeting with the original peoples of our
country.

Second: we will resume contact with our compañeros and
compañeras who are Adherents to the Sixth eclaration of the Lacandon Jungle in
Mexico and around the world.

Third: we will try to construct the
necessary bridges towards the social movements that have arisen and will arise,
not to lead them or take their place, but rather to learn from them, from their
history, from their journeys and fates.

For this we have achieved the
support of individuals and groups in different parts of the world who comprise
the support teams for the EZLN's Sixth and International commissions, so that
they will become communication links between the Zapatista Support Bases and the
individuals, groups, and collectives that are Adherents to the Sixth Declaration
in Mexico and around the world who still maintain their conviction and
dedication to the construction of a leftist non-institutional
alternative.

Fourth: our critical distance from the Mexican political
class will continue; they have done nothing but prosper at the cost of the
necessities and the hopes of humble and simple people.

Fifth: regarding
the federal, state, and municipal bad governments--executive, legislative, and
judicial--, and the media that accompanies them, we say to them the
following:

The bad governments from all over the political spectrum,
without exception, have done everything they can to destroy us, buy us, and make
us give in. The PRI, PAN, PRD, PVEM, PT, CC, and the future RN party have
attacked us militarily, politically, socially, and ideologically.

The
corporate media tried to make us disappear, first with servile and opportunistic
slander, later with cunning and complicit silence. Those whom they served and
whose moneys breastfeed them are no longer around. And those who have taken
their place won't last longer than their predecesors.

As was evident on
December 21, 2012, they've all failed.

It remains to be seen if the
federal, executive, legislative, and judicial government decides to once again
resort to the counterinsurgency policy that has only achieved a rickety farse
clumsily based on media management, or if it recognizes and fulfills its duty
and raises indigenous rights and culture to constitutional ranking as
established by the so-called "San Andres Accords," signed by the federal
government in 1996, which was ruled by the same party that now controls the
executive branch.

It remains to be seen if the state government will
decide if it continues its dishonest and despicable strategy of its predecesor
which, in addition to being corrupt and deceitful, used the Chiapan people's
money for his own enrichment and that of his accomplices and set about openly
buying voices and pens in the media, while he heaped misery upon the Chiapan
people, at the same time that he was using police and paramilitaries to try to
stop the organizational advance of the Zapatista villages; or if it will
instead, with truth and justice, accept our existence and the idea that a new
form of social life is blossoming in Zapatista territory, Chiapas, Mexico.
Blossoming that draws the attention of honest people all over the
planet.

It remains to be seen if the municipal governments decide to keep
swallowing the millstones that the anti-Zapatista or supposedly "Zapatista"
organizations use to extort them to attack our communities, or if they instead
use that money to improve the living conditions of their constituents.

It
remains to be seen if the people of Mexico who organize themselves in electoral
struggle and resist decide to continue viewing us as the enemies or rivals upon
whom they can unload their frustration about the frauds and attacks that, in the
end, all of us suffer, and if in their struggle for power they continue to ally
themselves with our persecutors; or if they finally see in us another way of
doing politics.

Sixth: in the coming days the EZLN, through its Sixth and
International commissions, will announce a series of initiatives of a civil and
peaceful nature, to continue walking together with the other original peoples of
Mexico and the whole continent, along with those in Mexico and around the whole
world who resist and struggle down and to the left.

Brothers and
sisters:Compañeros and compañeras:

Before, we had the good fortune of
honest and noble attention from various media outlets. We thanked them for it
then. But that was completely erased with their later attitude.

Those who
bet that we only existed in the media and that with the siege of lies and
silence we would disappear were wrong.

When there weren't cameras,
microphones, pens, ears, and looks, we existed.

When they defamed us, we
existed.

When they silenced us, we existed.

And here we are,
existing.

Our pace, as has been demonstrated, does not depend upon our
impact in the media, but rather upon the world's and its parts' understanding,
upon the indigenous wisdom that dictates our steps, upon the unflinching courage
that comes from below and to the left.

From now on, our word will begin
to be selective in its recipient and, with the exception of a few occassions,
will only be understood by those who have walked and walk with us without giving
in to the media and current trends.

Here, with not a few errors and a lot
of difficulties, another way of doing politics is already a reality.Few,
very few, will have the priviledge of knowing it and learning from it
directly.

Nineteen years ago we surprised them by taking over their
cities with fire and blood. Now we've done it again, without weapons, without
death, without destruction.

That is how we differentiate ourselves from
those who, during their administrations, delivered and deliver death to their
constituents.

We are the same from 500 years ago, from 44 years ago, from
30 years ago, from 20 years ago, from just a few days ago.

We are the
Zapatistas, the smallest, the ones who live, struggle, and die in the last
corner of the fatherland, those who don't give up, those who don't sell out,
those who don't give in.

Brothers and sisters:compañeros and
compañeras:

We are the Zapatistas, and we send you a
hug.

Democracy!

Freedom!

Justice!

From the mountains
of the Mexican southeast,For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine
Committee -- General Command of the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation.

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